Q&A: Tithing Money That Was Stolen
Tithing Money That Was Stolen
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi,
If, for example, you earned 100 shekels but they were stolen from you, are you still obligated to tithe?
Answer
You are not obligated, because this is a custom. But one should tithe even this. When it was stolen, they did not steal it from the poor but from you. Just as in the case where the king’s officials forcibly took his grain, he must still separate terumah and give it to the priest.
Discussion on Answer
Correction: Pitchei Teshuvah, Yoreh De’ah 249:1.
Specifically in the name of the Yaavetz he brings that he does not accept this distinction.
But the discussion there is about someone who profited in one business deal and lost in another.
When the 100 shekels that you earned were stolen (if we can manage to define them as those very same 100 shekels), it turns out that you earned nothing, and you are exempt from paying.
See also what they discussed regarding someone who found a lost item that is legally his, but wants to return it beyond the letter of the law: Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky wrote that this does not exempt him from tithing, since he had already become obligated (and his proof is from Abraham our forefather, who “gave him a tithe of everything” even though he returned everything to the king of Sodom).
But regarding the case where the king’s officials forcibly took his grain: if it was taken for his debt, he is obligated to tithe, but if it was taken by violent seizure, he is exempt from tithing.
Here it is like violent seizure.
As for the matter itself, see the later authorities (the Yaavetz and others), who distinguished between someone who tithes regularly—in which case it is as though the tithe recipient is a partner in all his profits and losses, and he is exempt from tithing—and someone who tithes only occasionally when the opportunity arises.